Sick Heater or Sick Cheater? StonesLive Player Under Suspicion

One of the sickest heaters that poker has ever seen, or cheating his way to riches on stream – that’s the question being asked by the poker community this week after serious concerns were raised about Mike Postle and his incredible StonesLivePoker cash game run…

Veronica, also a regular and sometime-commentator on the California-based cash game stopped just short of publicly accusing Postle of being a cheat.

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She was, however, very unhappy that the suspicious activity – which we’ll get to – was not being dealt with properly, a claim the poker-room rejected…

The past couple of days has seen Postle’s poker play dissected by hundreds of pros and amateurs alike, almost none of whom can account for his LAG (Loose-Aggressive) playing style matching his incredible win-rate at Stones.

With dozen and dozens of hands shown as ‘circumstantial evidence’, Postle apparently almost never makes the wrong river decision, instead picking off bluffs, making incredible plays and laying down massive hands with alarming regularity.

Many are claiming that Postle has some sort of access to his opponents’ cards, either directly through the RFID used to show viewers the hole cards, or more likely that he has an accomplice messaging him what other players have.

Postle’s curious love affair with his mobile phone has added to concerns that he is somehow receiving real-time alerts, and playing accordingly, Allen Kessler certainly of that belief…

Todd Witteles, aka Dan Druff, on the PokerFraudAlert website posted a possible and very basic cheating code that a player with outside help might use…

For example:

• Opponent bluffing = Long buzz
  
• Opponent betting draw and nothing else = 2 long buzzes
• Call down smallish bets and lose on purpose = 2 quick buzzes
• Check/call any reasonable-sized bet = 1 quick buzz
• Fold = 1 long buzz + 1 short buzz
• Opponent has nuts = 3 long buzzes

Postle himself responded to the cheating accusations with a lengthy rebuttal, claiming he had always played the same style of poker and almost always with excellent results…

When asked by some to replicate his incredible Stones’ success – well into 6-figures of profit by most accounts – online, Postle threw out a strong appeal..

"I did do exactly what I have done recently online. Ranked top 10 on pocketfives and plenty to attest to me doing the same in online cash games. Unfortunately to some I’m guilty without understanding or seeing my past yet."

As a poker player, being publicly accused of cheating is probably one of the worst things that could happen. However, it’s probably up to StonesLivePoker to now clarify exactly what and how they investigated, and prove that their game is clean.